


Someone Else's Son

by creatureofhobbit



Category: All American (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 15:10:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20155624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Corey struggles with Dillon's birth and the knowledge that Billy Baker is potentially his father.





	Someone Else's Son

He’d handled it badly at the time, Corey knows that now. At the time he hadn’t wanted to have that conversation with Spencer about the real reason he was leaving Grace. But now he thinks back to that time after Dillon was born and wonders what he could have done differently.

He’d thought about it so many times in the months leading up to the birth; how he would feel about bringing up a child who could be someone else’s. And at the time, before reality set in, Corey had thought he could live with it. He’d accept the child as his; no one outside needed to know there was any possibility of that not being true. Grace always said the child was his, and it wasn’t as though Baker, with his lawyer wife and his two kids going to that fancy school, was ever likely to rock that particular boat, blow apart his perfect life by claiming the child as his.

That was what he’d told himself right up to the birth. Then people had started visiting on about how much like Grace Dillon looked. No one ever said he looked like Corey, and Corey tried not to think anything of it, because he did look a lot like Grace, anyone could see that. And he couldn’t see Baker in his face, at least not at the time. But in his darker moments, he found himself wondering whether anyone was secretly thinking that Dillon looked nothing like Corey, and just didn’t want to voice that.

And what if it then turned out that Dillon really was Baker’s son? They could make the choice never to find out, to raise Dillon as Corey’s and leave it at that, but Corey knew it might not be so easy to leave the past behind. Baker’s circumstances could change and he could decide he wanted to know for sure after all. Or there were always stories on TV where some medical emergency required the whole family to be tested and it would come out that way. But he’d tried to ignore it, to tell himself it wasn’t going to happen. 

He could even believe it until the time he found out Grace had texted Billy Baker, to let him know of Dillon’s birth, sent him a photograph. All those times Grace had sworn that Dillon was his, that he was nothing to do with Baker, and yet she was sending him that. When she admitted that actually she didn’t know for sure, that the father could be either of them, that had been the moment when Corey had known he couldn’t continue in the marriage.

What Corey regretted now was the impact on Spencer, an innocent party in the whole situation who had known nothing of it himself until a few days ago. He knows now that he should have made more of an effort to remain a part of his life instead of hiding away, attending Spencer’s football games but not letting him know he was there, walking away because Billy Baker had started turning up. Spencer still didn’t know that there was a possibility that Baker was Dillon’s father, but Corey didn’t want to be the one to break that to him, at least not yet. He was still hoping Spencer would decide to transfer back to Crenshaw, to join his football team, but he wanted Spencer to do that on his own terms, to make that choice because he wanted to return home, to be with his father, not to quit West Beverly because of Baker.

But he was going to try and spend more time with both boys, to be the father they deserved but had never had. He did still want to know for sure, he couldn’t deny that. But whatever the eventual outcome was, Corey knew he could no longer let it impact on his relationship with either son in the way that it had up to now.


End file.
